A Spicy Tempo Run

On the power of self-belief.

My training over the last few months could be best described as “I do what I want.”

My weekly mileage graph on strava looks like the profile of a very spastic mountain range. My daily mileage is often dictated by how many minutes of daylight are left. And my long runs have been all over the map – with some around 16, some around 30, and not a lot in-between. (My training could also be described as “not-super-recommended-for-long-term-success.”)

For weeks, I’ve promised my legs that slightly more structured training was ahead. Or, at least some more intentional and smarter running would start getting peppered into my erratic approach.

Part of this promise was motivated by the fact that I decided I would enjoy doing a half marathon time trial this winter. And by “enjoy,” I mean want-to-die for 90-something straight minutes, but in the most pleasurable way. Beyond the death-wish-inducing allure of the run, I liked that it will give me a goal as it gets harder to get out the door and run during the coldest, wettest, darkest months.

And with most traditional races still on hold, the idea of having a motivating something-something on the horizon is appealing. While I still don’t have a great answer to the very popular question: “What’s next?” – I can say that the PCT left me very curious. I want to explore how those 7 days, 19 hours, and 23 minutes of running will translate to competitiveness and grit in shorter distances and races. I am decidedly way more interested in probing that question through the mileage that I’ve grown to love that is closer to 30, 50, 60, or 100 miles than 13, but I like that a half marathon is an approachable goal for the short-term. And a good excuse to reintroduce some structure and some strategy and some work into my miles.

I finally committed to start doing the damn speed work thing on Christmas Eve. After procrastinating for more than a few hours that morning, I laced up my running shoes around noon, forked some carrot cake in my mouth, got Lizzo and Sofi Tukker queued up on spotify, and headed to a nice flatter stretch of pavement to do my three miles of tempo-ing.

As I started doing the tempo portion of the run, I glanced down at my watch and was a little alarmed at the number beaming back at me. My pace was about 15-20 seconds faster than I expected to run my speedier miles and about 15-20 seconds faster than my last tempo run over the summer. My immediate thought that I was being an idiot. After all, my recent track record offers little credibility in the smart running department.

But as much as I fretted about how stupid I was being, my legs didn’t feel stupid. When I checked in with them and asked them how they were feeling, they reported that the pace felt natural and smooth. And while my brain was freaking out, there were no red flags in my body.

I remembered running the Eugene Marathon through this exact same stretch of the city back in 2012 when I dropped 20 minutes from my PR and ran a 3:08 – which was a time that, prior to actually running it that day, I would have considered as off the table for me as traveling to space or befriending a dragon. My first marathon was a 4:40, my marathon PR going into that day was a 3:30, and my reach goal for the day was a 3:20. I was not a 3:08 runner, I would’ve pinky-promised with all of my littlest fingers and toes.

On that bright and sunny marathon morning in Eugene, a friend jumped in to run with me for a few minutes when I was about 6 or 7 miles into the race. And as soon as he joined me, he had to yell at me to stop looking at my watch.

“Knock that off, Emily!” he scolded. “It is entirely too early to be concerned with what’s happening on your wrist.”

“But this is too fast!” I cried. My eyes flashed to my watch for the 1,357th time in a single minute – and I thrust my satellite-sporting hand into the air to prove my point.

My goal for the 26.2 miles that day was a 3:20, which translates to a 7:38 minute pace per mile. The numbers on my watch were close to 30 seconds faster than that – with the trio of digits on my watch face not creeping any higher than a 7:15.  

“But how do you feel?” he asked, as we kept running past the quaint neighborhoods and tall evergreens of South Eugene.

“I feel really good!” I said. Which was true. My stride felt smooth and effortless. I felt like I could hold the pace for hours. “But it’s too fast!”

“It might not be too fast!” he argued. “Just go with it. Don’t overthink the pace. Just go by feel.  That’s your most important metric this morning.”

His words helped encourage me, but did little to calm my pace panic attack. Massive doubt continued to swirl around me like a Stage Five Clinging tornado as I kept running through the streets of Eugene. I would be cruising along, and then I would look at my fast pace and lurch back, certain that I couldn’t hold it for much longer.

It wasn’t until about 10 miles later, when I was running beside the charging Willamette River, still holding that same aggressive pace, that I asked myself, “But what if you are a sub-3:10 runner? What if you believed in your ability to break 3:10 today?”

I was over 2 hours into the race and my hot pace still felt good and smooth and relaxed. Maybe I was faster than I thought I was. Maybe I was faster than I ever could have dreamed. Maybe I could blow every marathon goal I’d ever had straight into outer space.

I started to believe in a different reality than the one I’d told myself for many months and many miles.

As I kept running down the paved bike path, I let myself believe I could be a sub-3:10 runner. And I spent the next 10 miles telling myself and my legs that. Over and over. “You are a marathon cheetah!” I cried as the lactic acid started to coarse through my bloodstream. I kept running faster than I ever imagined I could. And when I crossed the finish line in 3 hours, 8 minutes, and 1 second, the clock corroborated the belief I’d formed about 71 minutes before running onto Hayward Field.

I was a sub-3:10 marathon runner.

And I do believe that my finish time had more-than-a-little to do with the fact that at mile 16, I decided to believe in myself. I let myself believe in a wildly big and exciting outcome, instead of tearing the possibility down before it even stood a chance to become true.

***

Going into my FKT attempt on the 460 mile stretch of the Oregon PCT, I really believed I could do it. I had no good reason for feeling that way. I’d never-ever-ever run back-to-back-to-back mileage even close to what I would need to do to set the record. I had no hard evidence to build a good case for myself. I had plenty of evidence to build a case against myself. But at some point in the months leading up to the run, I started telling myself I could set the overall FKT. I started to really, truly believe I could do it.  

And then I did it.

There was, of course, more to the run than simply declaring it could be so. There were months of (smart) training, the hardest days of running of my life, and the very greatest mental challenges I’ve ever faced on trail.

But I do believe there was also immense power in that self-belief that I brought to that record-setting run. The optimistic confidence I packed next to the snickers and blister tape. Our minds are powerful things and the stories we craft in our heads can either shut us down or help springboard us to unimaginable places.

It’s easy to think of times when self-defeating narratives can do so much to hold us back.

If we think we might drop out of a race, we are infinitely more likely to do just that.

If we think we can’t hold a pace or finish a new distance, our legs will probably agree and back down.

And self-bolstering narratives can hold just as much power in their ability to influence the outcome of any given run – or life pursuit. If we choose to believe we can do something big, we give ourselves a chance to do that something big, propelled by a little mental jet engine fuel to help us get there.

When I told myself the overall FKT could be mine, it let me step onto the trail each morning with a powerful performance enhancer. So that when those inevitable impossibly hard moments hit every single day, I could lean into them with confidence, instead of running away with disbelief and doubt nipping at my heels.

***

Back on West Amazon in South Eugene, I decided to not back off my slightly spicy tempo pace as I kept running south, on the same stretch of road that hosted my marathon PR a bunch of years ago. I decided to believe in it instead. My legs continued to spin at a steady rate. My breathing stayed even. My pace panic attack subsided as I let myself believe that it could be my pace for that day. My tempo could be faster than I thought it would be. I could be faster than I thought I would be.

I relaxed and settled into my miles and watched my watch report the same pace for one mile, two miles, three miles. My tempo pace was, in fact, simply faster than I’d thought it would be. I was, in fact, simply faster than I’d thought I would be on that day.

As I jogged back home on the other side of the workout, I remembered how much I love doing speed work and hard running sessions. I got excited for the weeks ahead. To work hard and see what happens.

And, more importantly, I remembered that we are constantly faced with moments, big and small, where we have a choice between self-doubt and self-belief. And that the decisions we make in those moments can matter as much as the miles that got us there.